WHAT IS PROPERTY?
AN INQUIRY INTO THE PRINCIPLE
OF RIGHT AND OF GOVERNMENT

By P. J. Proudhon
DETAILED CONTENTS

P. J. PROUDHON: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORKS
PREFACE
FIRST MEMOIR
CHAPTER I.
METHOD PURSUED IN THIS WORK.—THE IDEA OF A REVOLUTION

CHAPTER II.
PROPERTY CONSIDERED AS A NATURAL RIGHT.—OCCUPATION AND
CIVIL LAW
AS EFFICIENT BASES OF PROPERTY.—DEFINITIONS
% 1. Property as a Natural Right.
% 2. Occupation as the Title to Property.
% 3. Civil Law as the Foundation and Sanction of Property.

CHAPTER III.
LABOR AS THE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF THE DOMAIN OF PROPERTY
% 1. The Land cannot be appropriated.
% 2. Universal Consent no Justification of Property.
% 3. Prescription gives no Title to Property.
% 4. Labor.—That Labor has no Inherent Power to appropriate
Natural Wealth.

using them as Capital, it turns them against Production.
EIGHTH PROPOSITION.
Property is Impossible, because its Power of Accumulation is
infinite, and is exercised only over Finite Quantities.
NINTH PROPOSITION
Property is Impossible, because it is powerless against Property.
TENTH PROPOSITION.
Property is Impossible, because it is the Negation of Equality.

CHAPTER V.
PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPOSITION OF THE IDEA OF JUSTICE AND IN
JUSTICE,
AND A DETERMINATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT AND
OF RIGHT.
PART 1.
% 1. Of the Moral Sense in Man and the Animals.
% 2. Of the First and Second Degrees of Sociability.
% 3. Of the Third Degree of Sociability.
PART I 1.
% 1. Of the Causes of our Mistakes. The Origin of Property.
% 2. Characteristics of Communism and of Property.
% 3. Determination of the Third Form of Society. Conclusion.

SECOND MEMOIR
LETTER TO M. BLANQUI ON PROPERTY

Linked Contents

rather, to await the publication of the remainder of Proudhon's writings, that they
may form an opinion for themselves.—Translator.
In an important work, which his habitual readers certainly have not forgotten,
although death did not allow him to finish it, Sainte Beuve thus judges the
correspondence of the great publicist:—
"The letters of Proudhon, even outside the circle of his particular friends, will
always be of value; we can always learn something from them, and here is the proper
place to determine the general character of his correspondence.
"It has always been large, especially since he became so celebrated; and, to tell the
truth, I am persuaded that, in the future, the correspondence of Proudhon will be his
principal, vital work, and that most of his books will be only accessory to and
corroborative of this. At any rate, his books can be well understood only by the aid of
his letters and the continual explanations which he makes to those who consult him in
their doubt, and request him to define more clearly his position.
"There are, among celebrated people, many methods of correspondence. There are
those to whom letter-writing is a bore, and who, assailed with questions and
compliments, reply in the greatest haste, solely that the job may be over with, and
who return politeness for politeness, mingling it with more or less wit. This kind of
correspondence, though coming from celebrated people, is insignificant and
unworthy of collection and classification.
"After those who write letters in performance of a disagreeable duty, and almost
side by side with them in point of insignificance, I should put those who write in a
manner wholly external, wholly superficial, devoted only to flattery, lavishing praise
like gold, without counting it; and those also who weigh every word, who reply
formally and pompously, with a view to fine phrases and effects. They exchange
words only, and choose them solely for their brilliancy and show. You think it is you,
individually, to whom they speak; but they are addressing themselves in your person
to the four corners of Europe. Such letters are empty, and teach as nothing but
theatrical execution and the favorite pose of their writers.
"I will not class among the latter the more prudent and sagacious authors who,

his letters, he does not revise them, he spends no time in reading them over; we have
a first draught, excellent and clear, a jet from the fountain-head, but that is all. The
new arguments, which he discovers in support of his ideas and which opposition
suggests to him, are an agreeable surprise, and shed a light which we should vainly
search for even in his works. His correspondence differs essentially from his books,
in that it gives you no uneasiness; it places you in the very heart of the man, explains
him to you, and leaves you with an impression of moral esteem and almost of
intellectual security. We feel his sincerity. I know of no one to whom he can be more
fitly compared in this respect than George Sand, whose correspondence is large, and
at the same time full of sincerity. His role and his nature correspond. If he is writing
to a young man who unbosoms himself to him in sceptical anxiety, to a young
woman who asks him to decide delicate questions of conduct for her, his letter takes
the form of a short moral essay, of a father-confessor's advice. Has he perchance
attended the theatre (a rare thing for him) to witness one of Ponsart's comedies, or a
drama of Charles Edmond's, he feels bound to give an account of his impressions to
the friend to whom he is indebted for this pleasure, and his letter becomes a literary
and philosophical criticism, full of sense, and like no other. His familiarity is suited
to his correspondent; he affects no rudeness. The terms of civility or affection which
he employs towards his correspondents are sober, measured, appropriate to each, and
honest in their simplicity and cordiality. When he speaks of morals and the family, he
seems at times like the patriarchs of the Bible. His command of language is complete,
and he never fails to avail himself of it. Now and then a coarse word, a few
personalities, too bitter and quite unjust or injurious, will have to be suppressed in
printing; time, however, as it passes away, permits many things and renders them
inoffensive. Am I right in saying that Proudhon's correspondence, always substantial,
will one day be the most accessible and attractive portion of his works?"
Almost the whole of Proudhon's real biography is included in his correspondence.
Up to 1837, the date of the first letter which we have been able to collect, his life,
narrated by Sainte Beuve, from whom we make numerous extracts, may be summed
up in a few pages.

he might not disturb the classes with his noise; and that, having no hat, he went to
school bareheaded. One day, towards the close of his studies, on returning from the
distribution of the prizes, loaded with crowns, he found nothing to eat in the house.
"In his eagerness for labor and his thirst for knowledge, Proudhon," says Sainte
Beuve, "was not content with the instruction of his teachers. From his twelfth to his
fourteenth year, he was a constant frequenter of the town library. One curiosity led to
another, and he called for book after book, sometimes eight or ten at one sitting. The
learned librarian, the friend and almost the brother of Charles Nodier, M. Weiss,
approached him one day, and said, smiling, 'But, my little friend, what do you wish to
do with all these books?' The child raised his head, eyed his questioner, and replied:
'What's that to you?' And the good M. Weiss remembers it to this day."
Forced to earn his living, Proudhon could not continue his studies. He entered a
printing-office in Besancon as a proof-reader. Becoming, soon after, a compositor, he
made a tour of France in this capacity. At Toulon, where he found himself without
money and without work, he had a scene with the mayor, which he describes in his
work on "Justice."
Sainte Beuve says that, after his tour of France, his service book being filled with
good certificates, Proudhon was promoted to the position of foreman. But he does not
tell us, for the reason that he had no knowledge of a letter written by Fallot, of which
we never heard until six months since, that the printer at that time contemplated
quitting his trade in order to become a teacher.
Towards 1829, Fallot, who was a little older than Proudhon, and who, after having
obtained the Suard pension in 1832, died in his twenty-ninth year, while filling the
position of assistant librarian at the Institute, was charged, Protestant though he was,
with the revisal of a "Life of the Saints," which was published at Besancon. The book
was in Latin, and Fallot added some notes which also were in Latin.
"But," says Sainte Beuve, "it happened that some errors escaped his attention,
which Proudhon, then proof-reader in the printing office, did not fail to point out to
him. Surprised at finding so good a Latin scholar in a workshop, he desired to make
his acquaintance; and soon there sprung up between them a most earnest and intimate

frank and artless gayety with which you have sprinkled it, a tinge of sadness and
despondency which pains me. You are unhappy, my friend: your present situation
does not suit you; you cannot remain in it, it was not made for you, it is beneath you;
you ought, by all means, to leave it, before its injurious influence begins to affect
your faculties, and before you become settled, as they say, in the ways of your
profession, were it possible that such a thing could ever happen, which I flatly deny.
You are unhappy; you have not yet entered upon the path which Nature has marked
out for you. But, faint-hearted soul, is that a cause for despondency? Ought you to
feel discouraged? Struggle, morbleu, struggle persistently, and you will triumph. J. J.
Rousseau groped about for forty years before his genius was revealed to him. You
are not J. J Rousseau; but listen: I know not whether I should have divined the author
of "Emile" when he was twenty years of age, supposing that I had been his
contemporary, and had enjoyed the honor of his acquaintance. But I have known you,
I have loved you, I have divined your future, if I may venture to say so; for the first
time in my life, I am going to risk a prophecy. Keep this letter, read it again fifteen or
twenty years hence, perhaps twenty-five, and if at that time the prediction which I am
about to make has not been fulfilled, burn it as a piece of folly out of charity and
respect for my memory. This is my prediction: you will be, Proudhon, in spite of
yourself, inevitably, by the fact of your destiny, a writer, an author; you will be a
philosopher; you will be one of the lights of the century, and your name will occupy
a place in the annals of the nineteenth century, like those of Gassendi, Descartes,
Malebranche, and Bacon in the seventeenth, and those of Diderot, Montesquieu,
Helvetius. Locke, Hume, and Holbach in the eighteenth. Such will be your lot! Do
now what you will, set type in a printing-office, bring up children, bury yourself in
deep seclusion, seek obscure and lonely villages, it is all one to me; you cannot
escape your destiny; you cannot divest yourself of your noblest feature, that active,
strong, and inquiring mind, with which you are endowed; your place in the world has
been appointed, and it cannot remain empty. Go where you please, I expect you in
Paris, talking philosophy and the doctrines of Plato; you will have to come, whether
you want to or not. I, who say this to you, must feel very sure of it in order to be

any: but what matters it? I suffer, I labor, I dream, I enjoy, I think; and, in a word,
when my last hour strikes, I shall have lived.
"Proudhon, I love you, I esteem you; and, believe me, these are not mere phrases.
What interest could I have in flattering and praising a poor printer? Are you rich, that
you may pay for courtiers? Have you a sumptuous table, a dashing wife, and gold to
scatter, in order to attract them to your suite? Have you the glory, honors, credit,
which would render your acquaintance pleasing to their vanity and pride? No; you
are poor, obscure, abandoned; but, poor, obscure, and abandoned, you have a friend,
and a friend who knows all the obligations which that word imposes upon honorable
people, when they venture to assume it. That friend is myself: put me to the test.
"GUSTAVE FALLOT."
It appears from this letter that if, at this period, Proudhon had already exhibited to
the eyes of a clairvoyant friend his genius for research and investigation, it was in the
direction of philosophical, rather than of economical and social, questions.
Having become foreman in the house of Gauthier & Co., who carried on a large
printing establishment at Besancon, he corrected the proofs of ecclesiastical writers,
the Fathers of the Church. As they were printing a Bible, a Vulgate, he was led to
compare the Latin with the original Hebrew.
"In this way," says Sainte Beuve, "he learned Hebrew by himself, and, as
everything was connected in his mind, he was led to the study of comparative
philology. As the house of Gauthier published many works on Church history and
theology, he came also to acquire, through this desire of his to investigate everything,
an extensive knowledge of theology, which afterwards caused misinformed persons
to think that he had been in an ecclesiastical seminary."
Towards 1836, Proudhon left the house of Gauthier, and, in company with an
associate, established a small printing-office in Besancon. His contribution to the
partnership consisted, not so much in capital, as in his knowledge of the trade. His
partner committing suicide in 1838, Proudhon was obliged to wind up the business,
an operation which he did not accomplish as quickly and as easily as he hoped. He
was then urged by his friends to enter the ranks of the competitors for the Suard

academies on Thursday, May 2, 1839, "has paid especial attention to manuscripts No.
1 and No. 4. Still, it does not feel able to grant the prize to either of these works,
because they do not appear to be sufficiently elaborated. The committee, which finds
in No. 4 some ingenious analyses, particularly in regard to the mechanism of the
Hebrew language, regrets that the author has resorted to hazardous conjectures, and
has sometimes forgotten the special recommendation of the committee to pursue the
experimental and comparative method."
Proudhon remembered this. He attended the lectures of Eugene Burnouf, and, as
soon as he became acquainted with the labors and discoveries of Bopp and his
successors, he definitively abandoned an hypothesis which had been condemned by
the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres. He then sold, for the value of the
paper, the remaining copies of the "Essay" published by him in 1837. In 1850, they
were still lying in a grocer's back-shop.
A neighboring publisher then placed the edition on the market, with the attractive
name of Proudhon upon it. A lawsuit ensued, in which the author was beaten. His
enemies, and at that time there were many of them, would have been glad to have
proved him a renegade and a recanter. Proudhon, in his work on "Justice," gives
some interesting details of this lawsuit.
In possession of the Suard pension, Proudhon took part in the contest proposed by
the Academy of Besancon on the question of the utility of the celebration of Sunday.
His memoir obtained honorable mention, together with a medal which was awarded
him, in open session, on the 24th of August, 1839. The reporter of the committee, the
Abbe Doney, since made Bishop of Montauban, called attention to the
unquestionable superiority of his talent.
"But," says Sainte Beuve, "he reproached him with having adopted dangerous
theories, and with having touched upon questions of practical politics and social
organization, where upright intentions and zeal for the public welfare cannot justify
rash solutions."
Was it policy, we mean prudence, which induced Proudhon to screen his ideas of
equality behind the Mosaic law? Sainte Beuve, like many others, seems to think so.

conditions is the true principle of right and of government. In the "Letter to M.
Blanqui," he passes in review the numerous and varied methods by which this
principle gradually becomes realized in all societies, especially in modern society.
In 1842, a third memoir appeared, entitled, "A Notice to Proprietors, or a Letter to
M. Victor Considerant, Editor of 'La Phalange,' in Reply to a Defence of Property."
Here the influence of Adam Smith manifested itself, and was frankly admitted. Did
not Adam Smith find, in the principle of equality, the first of all the laws which
govern wages? There are other laws, undoubtedly; but Proudhon considers them all
as springing from the principle of property, as he defined it in his first memoir. Thus,
in humanity, there are two principles,—one which leads us to equality, another which
separates us from it. By the former, we treat each other as associates; by the latter, as
strangers, not to say enemies. This distinction, which is constantly met with
throughout the three memoirs, contained already, in germ, the idea which gave birth
to the "System of Economical Contradictions," which appeared in 1846, the idea of
antinomy or contre-loi.
The "Notice to Proprietors" was seized by the magistrates of Besancon; and
Proudhon was summoned to appear before the assizes of Doubs within a week. He
read his written defence to the jurors in person, and was acquitted. The jury, like M.
Blanqui, viewed him only as a philosopher, an inquirer, a savant.
In 1843, Proudhon published the "Creation of Order in Humanity," a large volume,
which does not deal exclusively with questions of social economy. Religion,
philosophy, method, certainty, logic, and dialectics are treated at considerable length.
Released from his printing-office on the 1st of March of the same year, Proudhon
had to look for a chance to earn his living. Messrs. Gauthier Bros., carriers by water
between Mulhouse and Lyons, the eldest of whom was Proudhon's companion in
childhood, conceived the happy thought of employing him, of utilizing his ability in
their business, and in settling the numerous points of difficulty which daily arose.
Besides the large number of accounts which his new duties required him to make out,
and which retarded the publication of the "System of Economical Contradictions,"
until October, 1846, we ought to mention a work, which, before it appeared in

Where, then, lies the solution of the social problem? Influenced by the Hegelian
ideas, Proudhon began to look for it in a superior synthesis, which should reconcile
the thesis and antithesis. Afterwards, while at work upon his book on "Justice," he
saw that the antinomical terms do not cancel each other, any more than the opposite
poles of an electric pile destroy each other; that they are the procreative cause of
motion, life, and progress; that the problem is to discover, not their fusion, which
would be death, but their equilibrium,—an equilibrium for ever unstable, varying
with the development of society.
On the cover of the "System of Economical Contradictions," Proudhon announced,
as soon to appear, his "Solution of the Social Problem." This work, upon which he
was engaged when the Revolution of 1848 broke out, had to be cut up into pamphlets
and newspaper articles. The two pamphlets, which he published in March, 1848,
before he became editor of "Le Representant du Peuple," bear the same title,—
"Solution of the Social Problem." The first, which is mainly a criticism of the early
acts of the provisional government, is notable from the fact that in it Proudhon, in
advance of all others, energetically opposed the establishment of national workshops.
The second, "Organization of Credit and Circulation," sums up in a few pages his
idea of economical progress: a gradual reduction of interest, profit, rent, taxes, and
wages. All progress hitherto has been made in this manner; in this manner it must
continue to be made. Those workingmen who favor a nominal increase of wages are,
unconsciously following a back-track, opposed to all their interests.
After having published in "Le Representant du Peuple," the statutes of the Bank of
Exchange,—a bank which was to make no profits, since it was to have no
stockholders, and which, consequently, was to discount commercial paper with out
interest, charging only a commission sufficient to defray its running expenses,—
Proudhon endeavored, in a number of articles, to explain its mechanism and
necessity. These articles have been collected in one volume, under the double title,
"Resume of the Social Question; Bank of Exchange." His other articles, those which
up to December, 1848, were inspired by the progress of events, have been collected
in another volume,—"Revolutionary Ideas."

would not attend the banquet, if Proudhon was to be present. Five Montagnards,
Mathieu of Drome at their head, went to the temporary office of "Le Peuple" to
notify him of this. "Citizen Proudhon," said they to the organizers in his presence, "in
abstaining from voting to-day on the proposition of the Mountain, has betrayed the
Republican cause." Proudhon, vehemently questioned, began his defence by
recalling, on the one hand, the treatment which he had received from the dismissed
minister; and, on the other, the impartial conduct displayed towards him in 1840 by
M. Vivien, the new minister. He then attacked the Mountain by telling its delegates
that it sought only a pretext, and that really, in spite of its professions of Socialism in
private conversation, whether with him or with the organizers of the banquet, it had
not the courage to publicly declare itself Socialist.
On the following day, in his Toast to the Revolution, a toast which was filled with
allusions to the exciting scene of the night before, Proudhon commenced his struggle
against the Mountain. His duel with Felix Pyat was one of the episodes of this
struggle, which became less bitter on Proudhon's side after the Mountain finally
decided to publicly proclaim the Democratic and Social Republic. The campaign for
the election of a President of the Republic had just begun. Proudhon made a very
sharp attack on the candidacy of Louis Bonaparte in a pamphlet which is regarded as
one of his literary chefs-d'oeuvre: the "Pamphlet on the Presidency." An opponent of
this institution, against which he had voted in the Constituent Assembly, he at first
decided to take no part in the campaign. But soon seeing that he was thus increasing
the chances of Louis Bonaparte, and that if, as was not at all probable, the latter
should not obtain an absolute majority of the votes, the Assembly would not fail to
elect General Cavaignac, he espoused, for the sake of form, the candidacy of Raspail,
who was supported by his friends in the Socialist Committee. Charles Delescluze, the
editor-in-chief of "La Revolution Democratique et Sociale," who could not forgive
him for having preferred Raspail to Ledru-Rollin, the candidate of the Mountain,
attacked him on the day after the election with a violence which overstepped all
bounds. At first, Proudhon had the wisdom to refrain from answering him. At length,
driven to an extremity, he became aggressive himself, and Delescluze sent him his

Taken to the office of the prefect of police, then to Sainte-Pelagie, he was in the
Conciergerie on the day of the 13th of June, 1849, which ended with the violent
suppression of "Le Peuple." He then began to write the "Confessions of a
Revolutionist," published towards the end of the year. He had been again transferred
to Sainte-Pelagie, when he married, in December, 1849, Mlle. Euphrasie Piegard, a
young working girl whose hand he had requested in 1847. Madame Proudhon bore
him four daughters, of whom but two, Catherine and Stephanie, survived their father.
Stephanie died in 1873.
In October, 1849, "Le Peuple" was replaced by a new journal, "La Voix du
Peuple," which Proudhon edited from his prison cell. In it were published his
discussions with Pierre Leroux and Bastiat.
The political articles which he sent to "La Voix du Peuple" so displeased the
government finally, that it transferred him to Doullens, where he was secretly
confined for some time. Afterwards taken back to Paris, to appear before the assizes
of the Seine in reference to an article in "La Voix du Peuple," he was defended by M.
Cremieux and acquitted. From the Conciergerie he went again to Sainte-Pelagie,
where he ended his three years in prison on the 6th of June, 1852.
"La Voix du Peuple," suppressed before the promulgation of the law of the 31st of
May, had been replaced by a weekly sheet, "Le Peuple" of 1850. Established by the
aid of the principal members of the Mountain, this journal soon met with the fate of
its predecessors.
In 1851, several months before the coup d'Etat, Proudhon published the "General
Idea of the Revolution of the Nineteenth Century," in which, after having shown the
logical series of unitary governments,—from monarchy, which is the first term, to the
direct government of the people, which is the last,—he opposes the ideal of an-archy
or self-government to the communistic or governmental ideal.
At this period, the Socialist party, discouraged by the elections of 1849, which
resulted in a greater conservative triumph than those of 1848, and justly angry with
the national representative body which had just passed the law of the 31st of May,
1850, demanded direct legislation and direct government. Proudhon, who did not

permission was steadily refused him. The imperial government always suspected him
after the publication of the "Social Revolution Demonstrated by the Coup d'Etat."